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Courting the world’s most beautiful woman was, actually, far better than Sha Hualing expected.
It turned out, the best way to cope with being rivals with a woman so beautiful she had to wear a veil was to simply court her yourself! Make her your own! Sha Hualing having competition for being the coolest, hottest, prettiest, strongest girl in the world meant nothing when you got to claim your top competitor as your cultivation partner! It all worked out perfectly!
It had taken a while for them to get there, of course. For at least the first year or two after Maigu Ridge, it had still been on sight for the two of them - running into each other, no matter where or when, meant a duel.
Sha Hualing had poured years of frustration, rage, and jealousy into those duels. Liu Mingyan, perfect, poised, and unflappable as ever, somehow turned all of Sha Hualing's complicated feelings into an inferno.
Then the inferno, somehow, changed.
She’d started to look forward to seeing Liu Mingyan. Started seeking out the duels herself.
Among the demons, Sha Hualing was one of the prettiest, one of the fiercest, most desirable. She simply could not allow a human to upstage her!
Back then, Sha Hualing tried not to think too hard about it, of course. So what if the brief moment of seeing Liu Mingyan’s face was seared like a brand in her mind?? So what if, instead of hopeless fantasies of Luo Binghe, suddenly the thought of Liu Mingyan pinning her down and having her way with her were suddenly taking over her daydreams? It all meant nothing!
So she told herself, right up until she got fed up, nearly broke down Liu Mingyan's door, and demanded a courtship. And Liu Mingyan, for whatever, reason, accepted.
And, well. The rest was history.
...Except it very much was not!
Sha Hualing knew she was flighty. She was arrogant, spiteful, angry, and lashed out far too often. Liu Mingyan didn’t fix that, of course. Liu Mingyan could hold her down and whisper be good in her ear in that way that made her shiver and her blood heat, but she would never be able to change Sha Hualing’s fundamental self.
Thankfully, she never seemed particularly interested in doing so.
Which meant that, despite their... understanding, Sha Hualing still felt that itch to prove herself. To establish herself as, if not superior, then at the very least a force to be reckoned with.
So, obviously, Sha Hualing had to make sure she was the absolute best at courtship itself. There was absolutely no way this could go wrong.
...Sha Hualing may have forgotten to take into account certain cultural differences.
Humans liked gifts. She knew that much - she saw the number of physical objects humans lavished upon their objects of affection in her scouting missions, but she’d also been subjected to the courting habits of Luo Binghe and Mobei-Jun as they figured out their respective...situations.
So she’d definitely picked up a few things!
It started small, with a fine, delicate hair crown that Sha Hualing presented to Liu Mingyan with a flourish.
“For jiejie,” she’d said, eyelashes fluttering and her best smile on her face. “A courting gift, just for you!”
Liu Mingyan looked a little stunned, a pink flush appearing just over her veil as she carefully accepted the gift, turning it over in her hands. Sha Hualing watched her expression eagerly, wishing once again that she would just take her veil off when it was the two of them. She had been asking very nicely (and absolutely not relentlessly pestering) Mingyan about it for weeks, but she'd simply said it would take time to get there and that Sha Hualing needed patience.
Patience who!! Sha Hualing was the most patient demon out there!
....So maybe this little courtship effort was also to move things along. Not that she needed another motive to prove that, when it came to courting, she was simply the best there is.
“For me?” Liu Mingyan echoed. Her eyes flicked back up to Sha Hualing’s in question. “I never thought you were the type for courtship gifts.”
Sha Hualing puffed up in indignation, crossing her arms over her chest. “I can do courtship!” she snapped, “And I’m going to be the best there ever was at it! Just you wait.”
And there it was - the flicker of a flame in Liu Mingyan’s eyes, the light of competition that made Sha Hualing’s heart pump just a little bit faster. “The best there ever was, hm?” she says slowly, turning the hair crown over in her hands and tracing her fingers over the delicate engravings.
Seeming to come to a decision, Liu Mingyan put the crown down and, instead dragged Sha Hualing closer. “I was going to say it is unnecessary,” she murmured, her voice dipping low in the way that makes Sha Hualing shiver, “But if you want to see who is the best at courtship, who am I to stop you?”
Sha Hualing did not miss the implications of her partner’s words, the thrill of competition zipping like lightning up her spine. And when Mingyan leaned in, she met her halfway.
“What the fuck is this!”
Her nameless subordinate (okay, he probably had a name. Sha Hualing simply did not care) sent her a wary, sidelong look. “Saintess, it appears to be...flowers? From the human realm?”
It was, in fact, flowers. An absolute shit ton of them.
That Liu Mingyan had personally brought to the demon realm, to her residence in her territory just for her.
Sha Hualing didn’t know whether she should be delighted or enraged, so she chose to be both.
A few gift exchanges later, Sha Hualing was convinced that this was both the best and worst idea that she’s ever had.
First of all, it was absolutely bringing the competition she’d so craved back into her life - she and Mingyan still sparred regularly, of course, but having the specter of “which of us is the best at courtship” hanging over their heads simply made the thrill that much better!
(Sha Hualing was normal, and could be trusted in a relationship with a human).
In the meantime, their gifts had only continued to escalate. Following Liu Mingyan’s stunt with the flowers, Sha Hualing had decided that it was only fair to follow it with a massive, extremely detailed statue she'd chiseled out of demonic rock herself that definitely captured her Mingyan's likeness perfectly.
Then Liu Mingyan had to follow it up with custom-made jewelry. That, infuriatingly, went perfectly with her current style.
Sha Hualing had not expected her jiejie to be so fucking good at this. Of course, the best, prettiest, and most perfect woman in the realm had to also be ridiculously good at courtship too! She seethed, thinking hard about the possible ways to one up a gift that was - really fucking thoughtful, actually.
Eventually, she gave up. She would simply have to go for quantity - no way this could go wrong!
Less than a week later, Sha Hualing appeared at the entrance of Cang Qiong with her arms full of gold, jewels, and silver, radiating smugness.
Liu Mingyan, however, crossed her arms at her. “How much of that was stolen?”
Sha Hualing’s smirk immediately transforms into a pout. “Jiejie-”
“How much.”
“You’re absolutely no fun,” Sha Hualing sniffed. When Liu Mingyan refused to relent, she finally wilted. “All of it.”
Having to go back to the five different towns she’d stolen jewelry from and personally apologize to every single household was, quite possibly, the single most humiliating experience of Sha Hualing’s life. Liu Mingyan accompanied her to every single one, standing behind her as she pouted her way through the apology and ensuring that she actually returned everything.
Which wasn’t fair! She wasn’t even allowed to sneak one gold ring by! This was all for you, jiejie!!!
Liu Mingyan only shot her a bemused look, eyes crinkling over her veil. “Perhaps you can try getting your next gift through honorable means next time,” she said dryly.
“I’m a demon, ” Sha Hualing whined. “I’m being true to who I am! I even made sure to steal from different towns so that I didn’t just rob one rich bastard of everything and it was spread out!”
Liu Mingyan, infuriatingly, did not say anything to that.
Sha Hualing would simply need to come up with something better.
With gifts like jewelry and fine goods ruled out, Sha Hualing had to get a bit more creative.
In her defense, though, this particular one was instigated by Liu Mingyan herself.
Sha Hualing had originally planned on sticking on courtship methods picked up from humans, but... quite frankly, deep in her heart, Sha Hualing wanted to do things the demon way. She was sure it would be fine - Liu Mingyan had a fascination with demonic courtship that bordered on alarming, but Sha Hualing had never been bothered by it.
Quite the opposite, actually. If “hot and bothered” counted as an opposite.
So, of course, when Liu Mingyan presented her with the corpse of a Blood Lake Salamander, it was all Sha Hualing could do not to swoon.
(She definitely swooned. It was followed by a very adventurous time in the privacy of Liu Mingyan’s bedroom).
However, now that the challenge had been issued, Sha Hualing was absolutely going to follow it up with a challenge of her own. Her choice put up an excellent fight - Vampire King Scorpions had venomous teeth and the dreaded stinger.
It was so much fun to fight. Her jiejie was so thoughtful in giving her the opportunity to brutally kill monsters like this!
She presented it to Liu Mingyan by dragging its corpse to the entrance of Cang Qiong Sect and yelling until someone let her in. Seriously, why haven’t they just given her free access to the mountain yet! She had been so good these past few years and only blew up a few buildings on Xian Su Peak! That was way better than her previous track record during her ill-fated invasion attempt!
When Liu Mingyan finally came down to get her, she was suitably impressed. Sha Hualing considered it a win.
That is, until she presented Sha Hualing with a Bushy-Horned Rhinoceros the next week!
It took Sha Hualing two whole weeks to find a suitably better beast. However, when she finally she approached Cang Qiong with a Garnet-Bellied Hellhound dragging behind her, she was greeted by, not Liu Mingyan, but her annoying brother instead.
Apparently, their little competition had been escalating to the point where the beasts they were bringing in were getting to be too dangerous for Liu Qingge to allow his sister to fight while she was still a disciple. Which was so incredibly lame that Sha Hualing made several very rude comments to Liu Qingge about it, but at the risk of being chased out of the sect she went along with it.
Unfortunately, this now meant she had to find another method.
After carefully observing Luo Binghe and his human (from a distance. A very far distance. She was simply not stupid enough to make her intentions obvious) she decided to attempt cooking for Liu Mingyan. There was no way this could possibly go wrong.
(She buried her attempts in a remote corner of her territory. Nobody would ever know.)
So, perhaps Sha Hualing’s attempts to be the best at courtship ever of all time were not going as well as she would like.
It was annoying! It’s not her fault that her attempts kept getting thwarted, first by Liu Mingyan’s stupid righteousness and then by her stupid brother!
Her failure to cook was, obviously, not her fault. It was because she did not have human food in the demon realm. Obviously.
As she wracked her brain on what to attempt next, her eyes fell upon her copy of The Regret of Chunshan that lay on her side table. She wasn’t supposed to officially know who wrote it, of course, but that didn’t stop her from getting her hands on every single volume. And everything else jiejie wrote.
It had been, personally, inspiring.
Sha Hualing’s eyes lit up as she got a new idea.
“This is terrible.”
Sha Hualing did not shriek as Mobei-Jun materialized leaning over her shoulder, peering down at the poem she had been agonizing over for the past sichen.
“Don’t fucking do that,” she hissed, snatching her poem away and trying and failing to cover it with her arms. “And it’s not terrible!”
Mobei-jun, verbose as always, simply grunted. From behind him, his rat of a human edged forward, clearly craning his neck to try and see the paper while very badly pretending not to.
Sha Hualing glared at him, and the rat squeaked and ducked back behind his bodyguard. Or whatever it was they had going on these days. "It's for jiejie," she said, "Because I'm going to be the most romantic demon ever."
Mobei-Jun snorted, which was fucking rude because he was hardly one to talk when it came to romancing humans! At least she didn't try to beat up the object of her affection- wait.
Sha Hualing quickly shoved that thought to the side, because any hypocrisy could go and die, in her professional opinion.
She sniffed and stuck her tongue out, because she is the pinnacle of maturity. “At least I’m actually putting forth effort to write something for jiejie,” she sneered.
“Shang Qinghua writes,” Mobei-jun said suddenly. Sha Hualings eyebrows raised, glancing back over at the rat.
“Is that so?” She said slowly. Look - she didn’t need help, but...perhaps a second pair of eyes would be helpful in ensuring that her metaphors were dramatic enough. Or something.
“Wow,” the rat said, eyes widening as he read through Sha Hualing’s beautiful, perfect poem that had nothing wrong with it. “This is way more information than I ever needed to know about your...courtship.”
“As it should be,” Sha Hualing said smugly. "Well?"
The rat closed his eyes for a moment, as if he were accessing a part of himself deep within that he had repressed for decades and was dusting it off. "Okay," he finally said, blinking his eyes back open and sighing heavily, "I can't believe I'm saying this. Why am I doing this. Anyway, have you considered comparing her bosoms with..."
After Sha Hualing's perfect poem of love and affection was published, Liu Mingyan wrote back, obviously.
It was infuriatingly poetic. The main issue with her jiejie's writing, Sha Hualing decided, was that she loved making use of flowery metaphors to describe their passionate meetings. So many words about flowers and peaches and blah blah blah!!!!!
Sha Hualing all but kicked down the door to Mobei-Jun's palace to consult with his rat for retaliation. He was surprisingly good at writing raunchy prose - she hated to say it, but she was almost delighted at the discovery.
The next poem was even more explicit than her last. She was very proud of it.
Just as their previous courtship attempts, both Liu Mingyan and Sha Hualing refused to back down, with each publication becoming raunchier than the last. Sha Hualing was having a wonderful time - Liu Mingyan never brought it up during their meetings in the meantime, but the fire in her eyes as they sparred told Sha Hualing everything she needed to know.
This lasted right up until her most recent submission, which was simply sent back to her with the note: “We are sorry to say that this is not appropriate for public consumption. Please edit before publication."
That week, there was no new poem from Liu Su Mian Hua either, so Sha Hualing supposed that Liu-jiejie had also been hit with the same rejection letter. She briefly considered burning down the publishing house, but decided not to.
She would simply have to think of something else.
Finally, Sha Hualing made the executive decision that the best possible gift would simply be herself.
And so, Sha Hualing snuck onto Cang Qiong Mountain, hid herself in Liu Mingyan’s room, stuck a bow on her head and waited.
She was only wearing the bow.
It went exactly as well as she hoped.